I’ve finally got round to seeing ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. It is
a fairly routine adventure story, topped off with great effects and lots of
heroic ‘derring-do’. The nut
jobs who complained about it as propaganda
for the climate change lobby clearly need to get out more, because in the end
the science in the film is there only to serve as a trigger for the action.
Some political points were made of course but they were
nothing to do with climate change – I’m sure the irony of millions of illegal
immigrants heading south over the Rio Grande into Mexico was not lost on
US audiences for example. In the end
though, to use the fact that a filmmaker takes liberties with the science of
climate change for dramatic effect, as an argument against the reality is to say
the least bizarre. I suspect that those who are still trying to deny what is
going would be doing so in letters written in green ink if they didn’t have
access to e-mail.
I don’t see such concern for scientific rigour in other
films. As I've said before - how many buses can leap across 30 foot gaps in the roadway (Speed), how likely is it that a
virus could be uploaded to a computer you've never seen, built using technology
you have no idea about (Independence
Day), how likely is it that you could clone a replica Hitler to take over
the world (The Boys from Brazil)
how likely is any of the action in any James Bond movie? And as for The Stepford Wives! Its one
thing to criticise a move because it is badly written but really people - get a
life!
The latest report from the IPCC
seems to have finally demonstrated the reality of climate change and what we
face over the next 100 years. The projections are frightening:
- Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
- Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
- Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
- Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of
century
- Increase in heatwaves very likely
- Increase in tropical storm intensity likely
These predictions exclude areas of really tentative
science. For example, there is no consensus about the effect of melting polar
ice on currents like the Gulf Stream or about the speed with which it would
happen. Because they have been excluded it is possible that the impact on sea
levels would be much greater, while the impact on temperature is also
uncertain. The scenario in The Day After Tomorrow is still one of the
possibilities if rather more remote than once thought.
There are those scientific ignoramuses (ignorami?) who
would argue that these uncertain impacts should
have been included, thus widening the range of error. There are even more
stupid people who decry the fact that scientists revise their views. Take this
for example:
On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article
entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:
"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable
weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are
beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological
fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely
the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists
take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere
has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows
no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly
apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the
harbinger of another ice age."
Their conclusion then was "The trend shows no
indication of reversing"! And, wonders of wonders, the impossible to
conceive "reversing" occurred!
Take care with this because there is some fast footwork
going on. See how the conclusion ‘The trend shows no indication of reversing’
morphs into ‘impossible to conceive’? If that isn’t scientific stupidity it is
intellectual dishonesty – which is even worse because it is deliberate.
However, giving these people the benefit of the doubt,
they clearly do not understand the idea of scientific method and its impact on
uncertainty or even the concept of statistical uncertainty. I don’t think it is
accidental that the most outspoken opponents of the thesis of human driven
climate change are politicians and economists. Both groups claim to have the
answer to your every ill, neither group shows any sign of understanding science
and in general they do not progress by admitting of uncertainty of any kind,
let alone on issues such as this. In that respect I thought the exchanges
between the politicians and the scientists in The Day After Tomorrow to be
quite realistic, as the politicians struggle with the political impact of bad
news.
Those who deny the fact of climate change and its human
component seem to be resorting to ever more desperate arguments in vain
attempts to undermine the basic facts. The latest uses tentative suggestions
that Mars is coming out of an ice age as the basis for an argument that this
proves climate change on Earth is not man made. They ignore the fact that Mars
doesn’t have large bodies of water and that the drivers of its climate will
therefore be very different to those on Earth. Consequently the same event –
whether it be sunspots or cosmic rays or whatever else is flavour of the month
– is likely to lead have different climatic consequences on the two planets. They
also seem quite happy to use scientific data gathered over a relatively short
timescale – and recognised by its authors as highly tentative - to dispute
decades of work by thousands of scientists.
You may have come across Mr Myron Ebell (an economist),
who argues that the whole thing is a conspiracy
to do down the US. It is Mr Ebell, (not a climatologist) who claimed that the
UK Chief Scientist didn’t know what he was talking about because he wasn’t a
climatologist. Spot the flaw in that argument? I’ve seen Mr Ebell described as
an intellectual
terrorist and that isn’t wrong. He is certainly willing to shift
his ground and argue black is white so I suppose we have to class him as a
politician too. This site
documents Ebell’s activities quite comprehensively.
He isn’t alone of course – take this comment
on the Guardian Comment is Free site.
Environmentalists just form the rump of the social
scientist west-hating morons who are actually willing the environment to
collapse so they can say I told you so and blame the US.
Sadly such hysteria is all too common. It probably means a dim future for our children
and grandchildren.